About this Research Topic
Coastal wetlands (salt marshes, mangroves, tidal freshwater wetlands, tidal freshwater forests) are extremely efficient in sequestering carbon on a per area basis, compared to terrestrial forests. Although they occupy a minuscule proportion of the Earth’s land area, they store a disproportionate amount of carbon in soils (20-30%), thereby playing a crucial role in mitigating climate change. Nearly 50% of coastal wetlands were lost in the 20th century before this crucial ecosystem service was recognized. Furthermore, certain wetlands, including freshwater and brackish tidal wetlands, also emit methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas more powerful than CO2. The carbon stored in these ecosystems is known as “blue carbon” and conservation and sustainable use of these ecosystems is crucial to ensuring they retain their net-greenhouse sink capacity.
Buffered between the land and sea, coastal wetlands remain vulnerable to episodic disturbances (eg. storm surge, hurricanes), salinization, sea level rise, and other impacts of climate change. On the other end, anthropogenic activities like agriculture, aquaculture, harbor construction, and land erosion are important triggers of coastal wetland transformation. All of these will have severe consequences for the coastal carbon cycle. For example, change in the water table due to sea level rise will dramatically alter coastal wetland structure with important consequences for the dynamics of CO2 and CH4 emission and overall decomposition rate of soil organic carbon. Similarly, when wetlands are drained for agriculture, eroded or developed, they become a source of greenhouse gasses. The direction and magnitude of the greenhouse emission flux from such disturbances remain a source of uncertainty, with important repercussions, not only for global warming, but also for developing efficient mitigation strategies (eg. improved land management techniques) that will increase carbon storage.
We invite contributions that will help us to understand the consequences of climate change (sea level rise, changing temperature, precipitation regimes) and different management activities (land reclamation, flooding, drainage, agricultural management practices) on coastal wetland biogeochemistry (CO2, N2O and CH4 emissions) through a combination of computational, experimental, observational, and meta-analytic techniques. A considerable knowledge gap still exists in making a generalized prediction about the impact of different aspects of climate and land use change on wetland structure (eg. wetland hydrology, soil properties, plant physiological processes), that induce greenhouse gas emission across coastal wetland ecosystems, leading to large uncertainties in global carbon cycle models.
Buffered between the land and sea, coastal wetlands remain vulnerable to episodic disturbances (eg. storm surge, hurricanes), salinization, sea level rise, and other impacts of climate change. On the other end, anthropogenic activities like agriculture, aquaculture, harbor construction, and land erosion are important triggers of coastal wetland transformation. All of these will have severe consequences for the coastal carbon cycle. For example, change in the water table due to sea level rise will dramatically alter coastal wetland structure with important consequences for the dynamics of CO2 and CH4 emission and overall decomposition rate of soil organic carbon. Similarly, when wetlands are drained for agriculture, eroded or developed, they become a source of greenhouse gasses. The direction and magnitude of the greenhouse emission flux from such disturbances remain a source of uncertainty, with important repercussions, not only for global warming, but also for developing efficient mitigation strategies (eg. improved land management techniques) that will increase carbon storage.
We invite contributions that will help us to understand the consequences of climate change (sea level rise, changing temperature, precipitation regimes) and different management activities (land reclamation, flooding, drainage, agricultural management practices) on coastal wetland biogeochemistry (CO2, N2O and CH4 emissions) through a combination of computational, experimental, observational, and meta-analytic techniques. A considerable knowledge gap still exists in making a generalized prediction about the impact of different aspects of climate and land use change on wetland structure (eg. wetland hydrology, soil properties, plant physiological processes), that induce greenhouse gas emission across coastal wetland ecosystems, leading to large uncertainties in global carbon cycle models.
Keywords: Greenhouse emission, anthropogenic disturbance, sea level rise, extreme events, forested wetlands, coastal wetlands
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